Inside CM: Gretta Gets Married

By Alyse Leininger

We meet a lot of amazing and inspiring people in producing Cary Magazine. Many of their stories are told in our pages, but others stay behind the scenes. So we developed the Inside CM profile series to share even more about the great people of Western Wake.

Gretta Handley volunteered to model for Cary Magazine, not knowing what her assignment would be. We asked her to model wedding gowns for our Wedding Whites story (you might recognize her from this month’s cover).

While working with her, we found out she has a pretty exciting wedding story of her own — one not many of us can top!

Gretta and her husband, Jason, were married nine years ago in the Outer Banks. They had a pretty normal wedding — except for the fact that their I-dos were featured on the TLC show A Wedding Story. She laughs about the experience nowadays. “The whole thing was just a joke,” she said. “They wanted to see some super sweet sappy stuff, and that wasn’t really us.”

In order to even be considered for the show, Gretta and Jason had to embellish their stories about how they met and what their hobbies were, making them sound more romantic and exciting than they really were. “The day of the wedding I had to go around and coach everyone on what they needed to say and what ‘our story’ was,” she laughed.

To keep the producers interested, they listed hang gliding and bike rides along the beach among their hobbies — neither of which were actually true. Luckily, the producers thought it would be too dangerous to film them hang gliding and instead filmed them riding their rented bikes.

Some of their favorite (or most embarrassing) memories of the wedding come from the cheesy, scripted moments that were forced on them by the producers. Gretta was working at a corrections facility at the time, and the producers represented her as a police officer in the episode. “They really tried to run with that angle, even though it wasn’t true,” she said.

Going with that “cop” theme, the producers made them walk along the beach and had Gretta pull Jason’s hands behind his back and say, “You’re under arrest — for stealing my heart.” Those lines still come back to haunt them from friends and relatives who watched the show.

Despite the added stress of the whole experience, Gretta still says she’s happy she did it. “It’s fun to have the VHS tape now, because we had a small budget for our wedding. At least we have that to watch — even though it’s really embarrassing.” And it definitely makes for a great story!